Sepalcure - Fleur

Sepalcure - Fleur
Sepalcure's first release for Hotflush, "Love Pressure," filtered soul vocals through a sieve of dreamlike found-sound atmosphere, glub-and-click drums and crackling string samples. "Fleur," the follow-up, is sturdier in structure, more ravishing (and "Love Pressure" was pretty beautiful), and even less beholden to formula than the prior EP. Very little here holds its shape very long. It's cyber-soul, melancholy and adrift, trippy as hell but full of recognizable emotion.

"Fleur" seeps in, like low tide, before a groove is established and defined by a chopped-up female R&B voice reduced to her vowels. It's similar to what James Blake did on "CMYK," only with a more liquid rhythmic feel that's given grease by a woo that's more obviously electronically generated, but nevertheless gooses the whole thing. "Your Love" has the heart-in-mouth feel and head-in-space sound that recalls what ambient junglists were trying to do in 1994, only with less bass weight and drum gravity. It's wafty, but it catches you up. "No Think" matches a kalimba-like background pattern and quick snares with a soul vocal gradually obscured by even layers of dub effects. "Inside" is two minutes of rolling harp and strings distended till they're ether. Stuff this slippery seldom sounds so confident.

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Sepalcure’s combination of love for bass and 90s house acapellas is the culmination of a cathartic two week collaboration between Travis Stewart (Machinedrum) and Praveen Sharma (Praveen & Benoît).
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